This morning the members of the newly-composed Integrity Commission were sworn into office. The Commission has been defunct for several years even though the law calls for such body to operate as a check and balance to the Government and in particular the elected leaders. Today the new members including Opposition-appointees Melissa Balderamos-Mahler and Claudet Grinage, and Government-appointees Marilyn Williams, Armead Gabourel, Lisbeth Delgado, Wilmot Simmons and Nestor Vasquez took their oath.

Williams, who will serve as the Chairperson, spoke on the key role which the Commission will play.

Marilyn Williams – Integrity Commission

“It is the Commission’s responsibility to look at the financials, now the declarations were submitted to the office and the Secretary was looking at it, that is sort of like an administrative responsibility now it will come to the Integrity commission and now we will do I would like to say, I can’t comment on the depth of the analysis that the Secretary of the Commission did, however I can say that the Integrity commission as a whole will then look at the entire document and so our own analysis. My policy and practise has always been to do all that is necessary and as is ordered or prescribed under the act and so that is what we will do, I mean the act allows to look at the declarations that are submitted and look over them carefully and come to a determination where a certificate will then be issued to say everything is in compliance and if not we call the specific member in and have discussion until such time as we feel that the declarations are in order, the other thing is to deal with those acts that have been defined by the act as meeting the definition of corruption we can then conduct an investigation and at that point we will decide after we’ve done the investigation which allows us to interview the person that the compliant is made against, to interview any witnesses that we feel it might be necessary in terms of making a decision in regards to the whole process and then if we feel that the matter needs to go further then we submitted to the office of the DPP.”